U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki said Sunday that he is confident Congress will provide the money needed to streamline processing systems that led to a backlog of disability claims and slowed the rollout of a new educational program.

Veterans with service-connected injuries wait an average of about five months to have a claim processed. Without an overhaul, the VA estimates that by 2015, the backlog of disability claims could skyrocket to about 2.6 million, a tenfold increase.

The agency doesn’t have an electronic claims system needed to speed up the process, said Shinseki, who was in Snowmass Village on Sunday for the opening of a winter sports clinic for disabled veterans.

“Long term, this is one of our major challenges. Until we get the right tools in place, we will be living with a paper process,” Shinseki said.

VA pilot programs are up and running in Baltimore; Providence, R.I.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Pittsburgh that are expected to lead to a more streamlined caseload.

Congress has made a commitment to improving service to veterans, increasing the agency’s 2010 budget by 16 percent above 2009, Shinseki said. The Obama administration’s proposed budget for 2011 would give the budget another boost of more than 7 percent, Shinseki said.

The $125 billion budget request marks the second year of large increases in VA’s discretionary spending.

“My responsibility is to make the compelling argument that resources need to maintained,” Shinseki said.

After certain benefits took effect last August, the VA couldn’t keep up with applications and vets waited months to receive housing and book allowances. Again, the problem was lack of automation.

“The solution had to be a manual one. Under that kind of system, you hire people and train them, and they handle claims for you,” Shinseki said.

To help address the high volume of claims under the new bill, which expanded educational benefits, the VA hired 750 people. The hires brought the number of employees processing education benefits to more than 1,200.

The VA also gave an advanced payment to every student.

“We realized the payments were not going well. We realized that kids weren’t getting paid as they needed to, so we put into effect a $3,000 advance payment,” Shinseki said.

As of March 19, the VA had issued more than $2.4 billion in benefit payments to 236,819 people and their educational institutions.

The previous package of benefits hadn’t kept pace with the costs of a college education.

The package after the 2001 terrorist attacks provides tuition to attend the most expensive state university where the veteran lives, with stipends for living expenses, books and supplies.

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